glad you're ok. Yes Powercores are a joy in winter. Round here the issue is long months of dry sun means as a tree ages, a branch becomes weaker, and then the first decent winter storm then knocks that branch down and the soil moves from rock hard to soft and some trees just fall over, and you'd get dozens of these spread over miles so it can take a long time to bring power back. The UK keeps most electricity lines where trees are underground, the USA tends to keep them interweaved between trees. We regularly have 12 hour power outages, I have a very large UPS, all the devices in the house can run off batteries and we keep a gas cooker and hot water so can handle no electricity for days.

Then there's the inevitable earthquake which would cut gas and electricity and water with nil notice. As a result most houses are built totally different to Northern Ireland houses, single-story so you have less over your head to fall on you, each room has a large window you can climb through on the ground, the water boilers are all huge to store hot water (and store water) and in a lower down garage to allow them to crack and flood. However what is beginning to happen is because we not had a decent earthquake for 30 years new houses are being built with multiple storeys. Yikes.

I mean we would all love to have longer “proper” summer weather and while we do in general get bad winters every few years, I must say I’m glad our climate is the way it is.

We don’t get the extreme hot / cold temps like many other countries, no volcanoes to worry about and earthquakes are really rare and often not life threatening.

Our houses don’t have to deal with those kinda extreme conditions, and unfortunately when we do get the “extreme” weather the country comes to a standstill. I’m not sure if you have seen any news from Dublin where locals are resorting to looting - just to get some food.

On our way home from our day trip out, my wife was driving and I was snoozing, she woke me up because multiple cars were slowing down. Turns out a f150 sportrack was flipped on its side. I told my wife to pull off and I jumped out and ran over to make sure everyone was ok. The driver was a young female, who hit black ice and slid into the ditch embankment which flipped her truck onto her side. There was another couple that had stopped to help and between the other gentleman and myself we pulled her out of the truck and away from it since fluids were leaking and the key still in the on position. We all stayed with her until her husband arrived with fire trucks entow. Luckily her husband is a Detective for the DMV and had all emergency personnel on the way. He thanked us all and checked his wife out before conferring with emergency help and he set us off on our way.Crazy night because while most people slowed down, not one of them stopped to help so I'm glad we did along with the other couple.

The whole notion of a hard / soft border is interesting and will not be something that will be easily reconciled. So watching the MPs from mainland use Northern Ireland as a pawn in the Brexit talks is fun but also worrying. Going back to the “troubles” and the border was always an area of conflict, people are worried that this could drag us back in time with the peace process. This may have been part of the reason why the majority of people from Northern Ireland voted to remain in the EU.

The Northern Ireland government may not get back up and running for the foreseeable future as there are too many contentious issues to solve. It isn’t helped by the fact the elected representatives are the result of tribal elections, with people voting based upon their religious backgrounds not giving any thought to the party policies. Unfortunately this will not change any time soon and may take a couple of generations to weed out, as there are die hard areas where kids are brought up with a sectarian beliefs but no clue why.

And you also get people who believe the reason both Northern Ireland and British politics are so messed up at present is down to the fact that there are women in charge. Some people’s mentalities are stuck in the past hence why the likes of gay marriage and abortion are still not legal in Northern Ireland. In fact I’m pretty sure that it was the “older” generations that voted to leave the EU which direct effects the youngest generation who voted to remain.

Bit of a political rant

My weekend so far has been spent inside, trying not to buy a new exhaust system for my Z before I take it back out on the road.

So just sit and wait, if the can is kicked far enough it will eventually change direction.

Take say the availability of Anker Powercore in NI to withstand power outages. Currently all goods enter EU in any country say by sea to say Rotterdam, then they can freely be distributed to say NI. Not able to do that when left EU. Say you "took back control" and had different rules on Chinese electrical goods between EU and UK and say the UK did get a better deal. Then folks would drive up from Dublin, buy cheaper Powercore in NI and drive south and sell. EU won't like that. So you get a border. Or say the UK has different rules on testing for safety than UK, Anker might just think UK is too small and cease trading in UK and you can't buy any more. Same thing, you must either get no material change or a border. UK already on thin ice with weird plug which is why certain Anker Powerport not in UK.

So any kind of "take back control" has to either not make a material difference or there is a border. Anyone with a different view, well wait long enough and they are not here any more. Democracy weeds out dumbness eventually .

UK and Eire both entered EU on the same day so they could carry forward to a common trade policy to remove borders. If one of them decides to leave you cause a border. If you agree to be in same customs union with common goods rules then you either can vote and veto the rules or have rules imposed on you. So you either end up worse, or end up worse, or stay as is.

The sublime irony is basically because there are an illiberal party of 10 in NI propping up a conservative minority in UK the hard logic and truths will cause the ignorance to be corrected eventually with a change. Those harking back to an imaginary better past when there was an empire will be eventually not be here.

Most people here just want innovation, people and goods can move as freely as possible, good quality Anker products get to UK as cheap as possible with the fewest cost increases from localized rules.

Big nation's like USA can afford to have local rules because the effort to manufacture and test goods for those rules is diluted across a large market. The smaller your market for each set of rules the more you force either prices up or the seller gives up selling. This is why biggest markets are the cheapest.

In the UK history the way it got power was through wars and armies and won via oppression, owning half the world. Not sure we want to go back to that. If you know your history UK put an army in China once.

Since then they had a bad snow cold windy period which would have been fun to experience, at the weather they had this last week probably could not have walked these roads due to the snow above the boot line of my footwear and so would have wet feet, I do know how to slow that and have gaiters which bind the trousers to the shoe to slow snow getting inside the boot but they do eventually fail, and once you get wet feet it then sucks the heat our of your whole body, shiver, then you feel sleepy and just close one eye in this nice bank of snow..... (which has happened to me). So when snow gets too deep you must only venture out for brief periods and come indoors again to dry out and warm up.